Trade union leaders call off country’s biggest-ever strike

On Thursday, 28 June, public sector unions called off South Africa’s
biggest-ever strike, involving nearly one million workers. The
suspension of the longest public sector strike in South Africa’s history
followed the collapse of the unprecedented inter-union solidarity that
had sustained the strike for nearly one month, after it started on 1
June. Seventeen unions took action, demanding 12% pay increase.

Most significantly, the surrender produced a split amongst the Congress
of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) affiliates. While the National
Education Health and Allied Workers, Cosatu’s second biggest public
sector affiliate (and four other smaller Cosatu affiliates including the
Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union) led the capitulators, its biggest
affiliate, the SA Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) is leading the
resistance. Standing firm with Sadtu, on the reduced demand for 10% pay
increase, are the National Professional Teachers Association (Naptosa)
and the Public Servants Association, both independent unions.

The union’s decision to suspend the strike was preceded by the
government effectively ending the negotiations, by tabling a signed
final offer at the Public Service Coordinating Bargaining Council in the
week before. The government made the decision after it had issued an
ultimatum only two days before, threatening the withdrawal of the
revised offer of 7.5% as suggested by the mediators, and reverting to
the previous offer of 7.25%. Such was the fury of workers’ reaction at,
as one union leader put it, "Having a gun held to our heads", that
workers organised busses to travel to Centurion near the capital Tshwane
(formerly Pretoria) to picket. The Bargaining Council meeting ended in
chaos when workers entered the building one evening and discharged fire
extinguishers.

By the following day, the government denied vigorously that it had
issued an ultimatum, only to follow this by, in effect, issuing a new
ultimatum in the form of its final offer. According to the Bargaining
Council constitution, if either party puts forwards a signed proposal,
it remains on the table for 21 working days, after which it falls off if
a majority has not signed. As this article is published, there is still
no majority in terms of vote weight on the side of the unions. For the
proposal to become a council resolution, 50%+1 of the unions must sign
acceptance. Although the majority of unions signed the proposal, those
that rejected the offer carry a slight majority. It seems more likely
the government will repeat its actions of 1999 and 2004, of unilaterally
imposing its offer if the unions that have rejected it do not waver.

Politically significant strike

The importance of this strike lies not only in its size and length. It
is politically the most significant strike since the African National
Congress (ANC) came to power in 1994. Its repercussions will reverberate
throughout the Tripartite Alliance (ANC, Cosatu and South African
Communist Party) further weakening its foundations. There will be
consequences for the leadership of those unions that capitulated and, in
effect, forced on the membership an offer that, to say the least, they
are not enthusiastic about.

It has been said of the British labour movement that the working class
are lions led by donkeys in the TUC (union congress). After the recent
union leaders’ cowardly capitulation in South Africa, it would be no
exaggeration to say the same of the Nehawu and Cosatu leadership. Having
consistently rejected the government’s arguments that the package as a
whole must be considered and not just the salary component, the union
leaders suddenly found merit in the government’s offer, repeating the
very government arguments they had previously dismissed. Days before the
suspension of the strike, the Cosatu General Secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi,
in an address to a Young Communist League rally, in Mpumalanga, claimed
the 7.5% pay increase offer from the government represented a gain for
public sector workers, given that the package included the promotion of
some of the lowest paid workers on salary-level one and two, and an
increase in the housing allowance. Yet, only the day before, the Cosatu
president assured demonstrators at a picket of the Bargaining Council,
in Centurion, that the unions would not accept the government’s 7.5%
offer.

The confusion was compounded by the announcement (prior to the formal
decision of the unions directly involved in the strike), by the Western
Cape Cosatu Provincial Secretary, Tony Ehrenreich, that the Western Cape
Cosatu was pulling out of the strike. Ehrenreich was generally
considered to be to on the left within Cosatu and was a driving force,
two years ago, behind the launch -- subsequently squashed by the right
-- of a political left opposition to the ANC (described in the media as
a "new United Democratic Front" - the organisation that led the struggle
against the apartheid regime in the 1980s).

Although both Vavi’s and Ehrenreich’s statements were subsequently
denied and or corrected, the damage was done.

Strike tactics

It has been the Democratic Socialist Movement’s (DSM - CWI in South
Africa) position, from the onset of the industrial action, that the
tactic of calling an "indefinite strike" was incorrect. The Nehawu union
leadership, in particular, with their eyes on the coming ANC congress,
gave the impression they were determined not to repeat the "mistakes" of
past strikes. In reality, they were compensating for the union
leadership’s opportunist capitulation, in 2004, with an ultra-left
gesture, three years later.

It would have been much more effective to have called a ‘rolling
campaign’ of mass action, under the protection of an indefinite strike
notice. As we explained in our third and final DSM special strike
leaflet, an ‘indefinite strike notice’ would have provided indefinite
legal protection for carefully planned (once or twice weekly) mass
actions by the public sector unions. This action would have built up
workers’ confidence and organization and been used as a build-up towards
a general strike, drawing in the unions in the private sector, whose
wage negotiations are now also starting. The mineworkers are demanding
20%; the electricity workers are demanding 12%, the South African Local
Government Association, a notoriously hard-line employer, is only
offering only 6% to its workers’ pay package - clearly, the conditions
were there for a successful general strike. In the end, however, the
union leaders chose defuse mass working class militancy.

The public sector strike enjoyed overwhelming public support in spite of
the exaggerated media coverage given to isolated incidents of violence
and intimidation. The government and the media went so far as to suggest
that a number of hospital patient deaths were a direct result of the
strike. Yet, it was the government that for years been stalled
negotiations on a minimum-service agreement for essential service
workers, which ordered all hospital managers, on pain of disciplinary
action, to reject the minimum service level proposals offered by unions
at hospital and clinic level.

It can legitimately be asked whether the calling of an indefinite strike
was deliberately calculated to exhaust the membership and to prepare for
the union leaders’ capitulation. In the view of some Nehawu shop
stewards, their leadership adopted this militant posture to assure their
re-election at the Nehawu congress, which took place within days of the
suspension of the strike. Several factors led to the Nehawu congress
reluctantly endorsed the leadership’s recommendation to accept the
suspension of the strike. These included the fact that a considerable
proportion of the membership were on strike for nearly four weeks; the
hardship caused by the salary deductions due to the management’s
‘no-work, no-pay’ policy; the obvious divisions amongst the unions
including, crucially, the two biggest Cosatu affiliates; and the
disinformation concerning the strike, including from the media, which
reported that a majority of unions accepted the government’s pay offer
but omitting to mention that there was no voting majority.

The final unanimous announcement of the strike’s suspension was little
more than an unsuccessful exercise in damage control. Individual unions,
separately, already made announcements about the end of the strike. The
general secretary of the Hospital and Other Personnel Union of SA
(Hospersa) went so far as to denounce the Cosatu unions for holding the
other unions hostage for political reasons to do with the factional
struggle between the Mbeki and Zuma leadership camps in the ANC. He
described the government’s offer as "fantastic" for lower paid workers!

Although the government can hardly claim victory, the strike outcome
will feel like a defeat for most workers. The unprecedented class
solidarity, across all races and political traditions and the militancy
and determination of the workers, caught the government completely by
surprise. This made government claims about the strike having "a minimal
impact" look like the ridiculous propaganda it was. The government had
become accustomed to reducing public sector wage negotiations to a
farce, by routinely implementing what the Minister of Finance had
budgeted for in advance. For the first time, the ANC government was
forced by mass action to improve its offer, from its original 5.3% to
the final 7.5%.

Favourable circumstances for workers’ victory

There has never been a more favourable set of economic and political
circumstances for a resounding triumph for workers, since the end of the
apartheid regime. The booming economy which the ANC government
constantly crows about is undermining their pleas of ‘poverty’ when it
comes to funding essential services and paying decent wages. The
argument about ‘affordability’ was undermined by the first budget
surplus and another government budget windfall, after the South African
Revenue Service had, yet again, exceeded its revenue collection target,
leaving the government with an unexpected R11 billion extra they did not
budget for.

The government had also made a number of blunders during the strike. The
Minister of Finance announced there was enough money to fund a 9%
increase, drawing a stinging rebuke from the Minister of Public Service
and Administration, whose husband is the Finance Minister’s deputy.
Stern government department warnings to managers to comply with orders
to dismiss essential service workers who went on strike were roundly
ignored by provincial governments, with no more than 2,700 out of more
than 20,000 dismissal letters issued. The dismissals were also deeply
unpopular and callous, and as aggravating the crisis in a health service
already gasping for breath.

The Department of Health, however, backtracked and agreed to reinstate
the dismissed workers, on the basis that they will receive a ‘final
written warning’. This pre-empts the government’s offer. This makes
provision for a ‘return to work’ agreement, which spreads wage
deductions, arising from the strike action, called the ‘no-work
no-pay policy’, over 3 months, instead of taking a lump sum from the
workers who went on strike, as is currently the case. The government
also proposes that job re-instatement takes place with a final written
warning, provided their offer gets majority union support. Until this
happens, the government’s official position is that no workers should
be reinstated and the lump sum deductions should continue. The Health
Department’s reinstating shows the disarray in the employers’ ranks and
that the threat of mass dismissals of health workers was politically
unenforceable.

The ANC government suffered setbacks over its attitude towards other
essential services. The Labour Court ruled that non-uniformed staff in
the police and prisons could not be prohibited from striking. The Labour
Court also declared the dismissal of health workers in a clinic
specializing in the provision of treatment for HIV/Aids, run by Medicins
Sans Frontiers, in the black township of Khayelitsha in the Western
Cape, to be ‘unconstitutional’ in a case brought by the Treatment Action
Campaign.

The government’s embarrassment over the proposals of its remuneration
committee’s recommendation to increase the salaries of government
ministers’ and the president by between 30% and 57%, was compounded by
the howls of outrage by judges at proposals to increase their salaries
by lesser amounts (but considerably higher than what public servants
were offered).

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) leaders, in
particular, could also have taken advantage of the ANC’s deepening
divisions and the turning of the tide against the Mbeki leadership
faction by picketing the ANC policy conference that took place, last
week. But a leadership that claimed it was involved in a battle to
reclaim the ANC for the working class opposed demands by members to
picket the conference.

The strike objective of a 12% pay increase was not attained. The 7.5%
increase has already been undermined by the increase in inflation to
6.5%, interest rates to 13%, a further increase in the fuel price, and
with food inflation set to go even higher than the current 20%. Despite
this, the public sector strike brought about a turning point in the
relations between the classes and in the political situation in the
country.

Mass action forced government concessions

The working class saw a magnificent display of their power in the public
sector. For the first time, the government was forced by mass action to
improve its offer. The ANC government’s class character brought out in
sharp relief in this dispute. The ANC showed contempt towards the
unions, including by offering to "workshop" them on the contents of its
paltry pay package and on the "economic implications" of a double digit
salary increase. These actions only reinforced the hollowness of
President Mbeki’s keynote address to recent ANC policy conference. Mbeki
claimed the ANC was a "people’s movement", determined to resist pressure
to convert from being a liberation movement into a modern political
party. He stated the ANC recognised the working class as the "motive
force of the national democratic revolution."

The facts of the recent strike speak volumes about the character of the
ANC. The government’s determination to dismiss essential service
workers, the intimidation of striking workers, the use of tear gas, stun
grenades and rubber bullets to attack striking workers - all this will
leave an indelible imprint on mass consciousness. The argument of ANC
supporters that the strike was against "the government as employer and
not the ANC" (as if the ANC suffers from some form of multiple political
personality disorder!), was heard only once publicly this time, so
discredited has this tired old argument become.

That the ANC is a party committed to capitalism and which represents the
interests of the aspirant black capitalist class and big business was
confirmed by the outcome on the debates at its policy conference.
Although the majority of ANC members supported the public sector
workers’ demands it was not even debated at the conference. The much
more important business at hand was to keep the ANC on the course it had
been over the first 13 years of post-apartheid democracy - creating, in
Mandela’s words from 1956, when he commented on the radical Freedom
Charter, the conditions for the rise of a rich black capitalist class to
use. The ANC’s pro-capitalist policies were endorsed. At best, they will
be softened by some limited state intervention. Not even the proposal
for free education, or on a basic income grant, were firmly adopted as a
recommendation to the end of the year’s ANC ‘elective conference’.

Political character of ANC

A resolution by the ANC Youth League describing monopoly capital as the
enemy of the "national democratic revolution" was defeated in commission
and never made it to plenary (full conference meetings). Instead, the
role of the private sector in the development of the economy was
reaffirmed. Mbeki used his key note address to increase the misery of
the South African Communist Party’s bankrupt policies. He advised the
party that just as the ANC would never presume to impose its national
democratic agenda on the SACP, so too the SACP had no right to impose
its "socialist agenda" on the ANC.

Mbeki dismissed beforehand as mere propaganda predictions that the ANC
policy conference would be dominated by the presidential succession
battle. However, that is exactly what dominated proceedings. The Zuma
(former deputy president, Jacob Zuma) and Mbeki ANC leadership factions
are involved in mortal combat. But this is a struggle for power,
influence and control of the public trough. Only in the most indirect
way is it a distorted reflection of the class polarisation so clearly on
display in the public sector dispute.

The Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM - CWI in South Africa) was the
only left organisation that consistently communicated with workers
during the strike by way of three editions of the DSM special strike
leaflets, which were warmly accepted by strikers. In Johannesburg,
workers could be seen closely studying the leaflet and then neatly
folding it and putting it away. People from areas like Johannesburg,
Cape Town and Port Shepstone near the Kwa Zulu Natal/Eastern Cape border
contacted the DSM.

Our call for Cosatu workers to take the trade union federation out of
the Tripartite Alliance is finding an increasing echo. Many workers
remarked that the independent unions, by and large, showed greater
consistency, determination and clarity concerning the strike demands and
on the prosecution of the strike.

The Democratic Socialist Movement calls for the lessons of the strike to
be urgently digested by the workers’ movement in preparation for the
coming class battles. This includes struggling for unions democratically
controlled by the rank and file, which will successfully resist the
neo-liberal attacks of the ANC government.